


N is for Naquadah

by shinewithalltheuntold



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, season one, team friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 04:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8236853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinewithalltheuntold/pseuds/shinewithalltheuntold
Summary: Teal'c learns to live on Earth and begins to understand what defeating the Goa'uld really means





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a Teal'c Alphabet Soup fic thing on LJ ages ago.

His first months on Earth are filled with discoveries.  
  
Not everything is completely alien, but even those things somewhat familiar to him are just different enough that he spends much of his time figuring out how to navigate in this new world. And so he memorizes the route from his quarters to the commissary, to the infirmary, to the gym and to the gateroom. He identifies the various paths between the labs of Daniel Jackson and Captain Carter, and quickly determines the importance of the Earth beverage, coffee. He learns to say paper instead of parchment, how to write his name and use a telephone and work zippers and toilets and P-90’s and television sets.   
  
He teaches as well. He tells the Tau’ri all he knows about the Goa’uld, about the System Lords, about the accuracy of staff weapons and the weaknesses in Jaffa armor, about worlds worth exploring and worlds to avoid. He discusses different Jaffa fighting tactics with O’Neill. He helps Daniel Jackson practice his Goa’uld. He gives Captain Carter drawings and definitions and every last detail he can remember about Goa’uld technology. And he watches in awe and wonder as his teammates take what he gives them and use it to fight, to explore, to discover, and to create in ways he would have never imagined.   
  
But for all of the wonders he sees and all he learns during his first days on Earth, there is still an emptiness inside him, a subtle but unrelenting  _lacking_  that creeps up on him in the silent moments. An emptiness that does not stem from a single cause but is comprised of numerous elements woven together – elements that he slowly begins to isolate and identify in those moments when he is not learning or teaching, not fighting or exploring.  
  
Some of these missing elements are easily recognizable; the lack of his freedom, his family, his people ( _his god_  the voice of the past whispers to him, but it grows weaker with each day, with each victory, with each moment of hope). These losses are understandable, and the pain from them sometimes threatens to drown him in guilt and grief.   
  
But there is one element he cannot seem to identify. One that has him seeking out Captain Carter in the control room late at night to watch silently as she works on the Stargate ( _Chappa’ai_  the voice insists, but its scornful hiss is lost under his teammate’s enthusiastic ramblings about energy outputs and gate addresses). One that causes him to constantly double-check the location of his teammates in the field, an unfamiliar need he attributes to his uncertainties about their abilities and their inexperience working as a team. One that haunts him even when he has managed to temporarily silence all the rest.  
  
It isn’t until he stands in the broken remnants of the home given to him by Apophis and hears Bra’tac’s voice again that he begins to understand. For when he steps close to embrace his friend and mentor, he is struck by a visceral jolt of recognition as his symbiote senses the presence of one of its own.  
  
Naquadah.  
  
It is a feeling that he has not experienced since the day he turned his weapon on his fellow Serpent guards and chose to place his dreams for freedom into the hands of the Tau’ri. The knowing that comes when he shares space with another who possesses a symbiote. That indescribable awareness within that brings with it is a sense of completion, of belonging, of being Jaffa.  
  
The implications of this new knowledge hover on the edge of his understanding, but he cannot stop to explore them. Whatever feelings he is experiencing upon returning to his former home ( _shol’va_ , and now the voice is louder than it has been in all the months on Earth) must be set aside and all his focus must be upon his son. He must not allow Rya’c to undergo the prim’ta ceremony. Whatever he has chosen and discovered and lost in his life will be worth it as long as his son can know freedom from the Goa’uld.  
  
But for all the times he has saved teammates and friends and strangers on countless worlds, in the end he is helpless to save his own son. Rya’c might one day know freedom, but this will not be that day. And while he knows it is the only way his son can live, he wishes that someone else would take the symbiote from his body and place it within Rya’c so that he would not have to be the one to condemn his son in the same moment that he saves him. But it is his burden to bear, and if a small part of him takes comfort in the knowledge that he will not have to bear it for long, so be it.  
  
As he grows weaker, though, that small part of him that would welcome death is not strong enough to stem the flood of relief he feels when he hears the familiar voices of his teammates. He knows, even before they begin to speak of what they have done, that they will have some way of saving him. He has seen what they can do together, and the faith he once had in false gods to perform miracles has begun to be replaced by his faith in SG-1 to do the same.  
  
That belief in his teammates is rewarded as the new symbiote slides into his pouch and his strength begins to return almost immediately. It is not long before he is able to halt their procession to the Stargate and take Rya’c from his wife’s arms. He wants this one last chance to hold his son now that they cannot return to Earth together, for the symbiote Rya’c now carries would imprison him within Cheyenne Mountain as well.   
  
But as he gathers his son’s still frail body against his chest, he realizes that even if the Tau’ri were willing to let Rya’c live freely on their world he would not allow it. Because the instant he came close enough, he felt the naquadah within his son and  _knew_  him in a way he had not before. Not just as his son, but as Jaffa.   
  
And in this moment of awareness he realizes the cruel irony of his existence. The missing element that he tried so hard to find on Earth is contained within the body of something he wishes with all his heart to destroy. He can never be free of the Goa’uld without losing an integral part of what it means to be a Jaffa.   
  
It is a bitter truth, and one he does not believe his son should have to face so soon. Better that Rya’c remain here with his people, with the comforting presence of naquadah all around him as well as within him than for his son to know that same aching lack he has endured these past months with the Tau’ri.  
  
So he leaves his son behind, to be sustained by the combined strength of his mother, Bra’tac ( _his symbiote_ ) and his father’s promise to return. It is the only thing he can give Rya’c now; he only hopes that when he returns he is able to give his son the freedom he failed to deliver this time, and that it comes before Rya’c finds out the truth of his existence for himself.  
  
Because as he stands in front of the Stargate and hears the sound of his teammates make their way back to Earth, he fights the urge to remain still so that he will never again have to know the lacking that comes from being the lone Jaffa amongst billions of Tau’ri. That emptiness that is the reminder that while he no longer serves false gods, he will not be truly free of them until he is no longer truly Jaffa.

 


End file.
